And it only took founding a new journal to get the results published.

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It's not often you come across a scientific paper which notes that the information it covers is like something "seen on the television series Monster Quest." And you rarely read a paper which concludes, "The data conclusively proves that the Sasquatch exist as an extant hominin and are a direct maternal descendant of modern humans." But today, we have such a paper—and there's nothing usual about it, including the journal where it appears.

Back in December, our own Nate Anderson drove me to the bottle with a flurry of questions about cryptozoology. One of the big motivators of Nate's interest in sasquatch was a report that a Texas group had sequenced the creature's genome. Not surprisingly, the team behind this startling research had some trouble publishing a paper describing their results.

By all appearances, they've solved that problem... by establishing a brand new journal, called De Novo (I'm not kidding; they apparently bought an existing journal and renamed it). The journal's site appears to be a mix of clip art and some basic HTML. Though it claims to be "open access," the site actually charges $30 to see the bigfoot paper (although their press person was kind enough to provide Ars with a free copy). Payment requires a Google Wallet account.

Currently, the sasquatch genome report is all you can see. It's the only paper in Volume 1, Issue 1 of De Novo.

Running the data

Normally, publishers require genetic sequences to be submitted to a public database before a paper's publication, but there's a slight hitch here: the big public database requires a species identification, and sasquatch isn't officially a species. While the research team works on sorting out the species issues, it has provisionally settled on Homo sapiens cognatus. Some of the sequence data from the alleged bigfoot is available as downloadable supplements.

We're currently working with someone who has relevant genomics experience to do an analysis on those sequences, but much of the paper speaks for itself—and it says some very strange things. Figures in the paper show everything from iconic large footprints to old engravings of mythical ape-like creatures. There's even a photo of what seems to be a very shaggy carpet sleeping in the woods (with an embedded video, naturally).

The included clip of something shaggy in the woods.

Sasquatch Genome Project

The researchers (primarily a mix of forensics experts) have been collecting alleged bigfoot samples for years, accepting submissions from across North America. These include everything from stray hairs to clumps of fur with flesh attached to a pool of blood (collected after—wait for it—a sasquatch chewed on a pipe).

The team used fairly standard forensic techniques on these items: minimize contamination, gather the DNA of those who collected the samples, then ship everything out to contract facilities for analysis, with a large variety of tests being performed.

At this point, we get into some actual biology with enough details to analyze. And the details appear to point in the exact opposite direction of the authors' conclusions that bigfoot represents a recent hybridization between modern humans and an unknown species of primate.

To begin with, the mitochondrial DNA of the samples (when it can be isolated) clusters with that of modern humans. That isn't itself a problem if we assume that those doing the interbreeding were human females, but the DNA sequences come from a variety of different humans—16 in total. And most of these were "European or Middle Eastern in origin" with a few "African and American Indian haplotypes." Given the timing of the interbreeding, we should only be seeing Native American sequences here. The authors speculate that some humans may have walked across the ice through Greenland during the last glaciation, but there's absolutely no evidence for that. The best explanation here is contamination.

As far as the nuclear genome is concerned, the results are a mess. Sometimes the tests picked up human DNA. Other times, they didn't. Sometimes the tests failed entirely. The products of the DNA amplifications performed on the samples look about like what you'd expect when the reaction didn't amplify the intended sequence. And electron micrographs of the DNA isolated from these samples show patches of double- and single-stranded DNA intermixed. This is what you might expect if two distantly related species had their DNA mixed—the protein-coding sequences would hybridize, and the intervening sections wouldn't. All of this suggests modern human DNA intermingled with some other contaminant.

The authors' description of the sequence suggests that it's human DNA interspersed with sequence from some other primate—hence the interbreeding idea. But the best way to analyze this would be to isolate the individual segments of non-human DNA and see what species those best align with. If the authors have done that, they don't say. They also don't mention how long the typical segment of non-human DNA is. Assuming interbreeding took place as the authors surmise, these segments should be quite long, since there hasn't been that much time to recombine. The fact that the authors don't mention this at all is pretty problematic.

It's impossible to say anything for certain until we can get the sequences analyzed; hopefully, we'll have an update on that before the week is out. At the moment, though, all indications suggest that the sasquatch hunters are working on a mix of human DNA intermingled with that of some other (or several other) mammals.

137 Reader Comments

Thank you for providing these. Pinker's reputation as a polymath precedes him (I've also had the opportunity to see him speak on several occasions), and while this quibble certainly goes beyond the scope of my request, I'd be inclined to challenge what looks to be two fatal assumptions that he makes in his claim:

1) That human modes of communication aren't based on the same three criteria as nonhuman ones. Language as it exists now didn't spring into being overnight, and while it is quite complex and elaborate now, it wasn't always so. Inasmuch as words are metaphorical references to past events (e.g. vandalism refers to the sacking of Rome in 476C.E.)(1), there are ultimately a vast, but finite number of them in circulation. While word order in complex sentences may alter the interpreted meaning in nearly infinite subtle ways, the words themselves, as with animal modes of communication, are only useful so long as other humans "get" the metaphor. Failing to understand one or two in a sentence reduces any interpreted meaning to gibberish. An example of this would be a English-speaking Texan trying to understand Chinese - while he might be able to infer that they're pointing our food sources or warning each other about enemies (they aren't starving, and they seem to have an affinity for walls), what he would hear would be essentially random-sounding bird-song, which leads me to my second point.

2) That animal language is "random". Neuropsychologist Stanley Coren was able to come to some conclusions about the stability and consistency of animal grammar, vocabulary, and communication through his work with dogs(2). Off the top of my head (I make no absolute claims about the veracity of these figures), I seem to recall that socialized dogs are "bilingual", with a working vocabulary of 250 or so human words, and the ability to understand basic arithmetic up to the number 12. That some animals are able to develop a working lexicon in a human language suggests that it may not be as complex or infinite as Pinker claims. I do acknowledge that dogs are a created species, an offshoot of grey wolves, rather than naturally occurring, which certainly muddies the waters.

(1) See Antonio Gramsci's Prison Diaries, in particular theories of historicism and language.

(2) Coren, S. The Intelligence of Dogs. Don't have my copy handy, but you can google the particulars.

I only have a moment to respond, so not nearly as comprehensive or supported as I'd like (it's really just a list of assertions)...

You are correct, language did not pop out of nothingness. It's origins are however poorly understood (there are no linguistic "fossils"). What is apparent though is that language and animal communication operate in a completely different manner. Animal communication isn't syntactically generative. Language is. This is not a trifle at all. This is a critical difference. As to words having meaning and being metaphorical. You are correct, to a point. I may know a word that you don't. I can explain (using other words) what that word means. Bees, et al, do not do that (cannot?). Contrary to popular belief, the least interesting part of language is its lexicon. To the Texan/Chinese thing: this is complicated to respond to. First let me say that not understanding one or two words in a sentence is far from catastrophic to communication. A baby born in an English and Chinese speaking household will without conscious effort learn both languages. A bee born into another hive will not "learn" a different set of dances, those dances are hard wired. The Texan can learn Chinese. I know this doesn't really get at the core of what you're saying, but as I said, it's quite complicated.

No linguist I'm aware of would say "animal communication is random" because it is not. It has structure. Indeed its structure is VERY rigid -- another difference between language and animal communication. But, as I stated above, animal communication is not syntactically generative. It just isn't. This is where "infinitely productive" comes into play. Of course there are practical limits, but in principal, language is indeed infinite. (Look up generative grammars for more on that.) Animal communication exists because there is utility in its communicative facility however limited it might be. Using words like "words" and "grammar" and "vocabulary" when talking about animal communication is controversial to say the least. It is interesting to note that humans have, for the most part, retained their "animal communication" skills as well as having language. A dog "saying" FOOD, is in no way comparable to a human saying "I'm hungry." A much more interesting wrench to throw in here involves examples where primates have been taught to "speak" language. These experiments, however, also show that what humans do and what ALL other animals do communicatively is different in kind. I invite you to research this further. It's all quite fascinating.

[EDIT: It occurred to me last night that what you have pointed out to be assumptions are not assumptions at all, but rather the best explanations we have given the evidence we have. Pinker et al, are doing what scientists do. My references do not contain the relevant research, but that research does exist.]

* as soon as one of them comes up with a reader as nice as my Sony PRS-505 I might even consider it. I have the curse of the early adopter worse than most - nobody has actually come up with a device even half as nice aesthetically. Sigh.

(Ikkarus, I'm genuinely interested if you do have any book recommendations - only saying in case you missed the post where I asked, if you don't fair enough ;-).)

Um, that's a tough one. I had an excellent introductory text, but I can't find it or remember its title. Really I would just go to a campus bookstore and see what the text is for Linguistics 101 or an equivalent. It will cover language from many different angles. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

(Ikkarus, I'm genuinely interested if you do have any book recommendations - only saying in case you missed the post where I asked, if you don't fair enough ;-).)

Um, that's a tough one. I had an excellent introductory text, but I can't find it or remember its title. Really I would just go to a campus bookstore and see what the text is for Linguistics 101 or an equivalent. It will cover language from many different angles. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

No need to apologise - "I'd like an idiot's guide to everything you know" is a stupid question whatever the specialism. I think I still remember how to use libraries and bookshops, so no excuse for laziness :-).

* as soon as one of them comes up with a reader as nice as my Sony PRS-505 I might even consider it. I have the curse of the early adopter worse than most - nobody has actually come up with a device even half as nice aesthetically. Sigh.

Did I not link hardcopy? o.O

I went with nook because i did most of my bookshopping at barnes and noble anyway (and they had the best reader: no wasted space, just a screen, page keys, and a small touchscreen area, while all the others wasted so much with a full keyboard, like amazon). Buy it where you want, in what format you want. These days i don't even have a dedicated reader, i use my tablet.

My intention in providing the link was solely to make sure you knew the specific work to which I referred. Buy it where you want, in the format you want (or download it; he has a publisher, that means he sees little of the sales money, so i see no moral issue.) I was only trying to help out, not push a format or agenda; i've been fighting the FOSS fight for years, i don't push proprietary standards; though i'll recommend a less evil one over another if it has to be proprietary, this is not one of those cases.

I wish I had a fibre-glass stealth fighter and a Sasquatch. I'd fly it to the Moon (remembering to never leave the Sasquatch alone with the chicken, or the chicken with the grain), where I'd establish a lunar colony consisting of cloned Sasquatches, who would go on to create a utopian society free from discrimination on the basis of too much body hair, and ultimately achieve galaxia.

Why can't the chicken have some grain? If you only have enough grain for one meal for one chicken then your space colony is going to have problems, and don't you want a healthy hen?

Also don't be surprised when your 'utopia' starts discriminating against people with too little body hair, you shaved monkey, you (and let's be frank -- regardless of how hairy you might be by human standards, that's what you'd be to a sasquatch).

I'd actually just be dropping them off and coming back. What the Sasquatch does with the chicken, grain, cloning centre, alien artifacts, and 1979 Lincoln Town Car is entirely up to him, as long as utopia is the result.

Sigh. I know Carl Sagan said it -- but it's still not true. "Extraordinary claims" simply require "ordinary" evidence. Evidence that stands up to scrutiny deserves proper consideration, even if (especially if) it contradicts an established consensus.

The authors of this paper are in league with the History Channel and wanted some sciencey sounding stuff to fill their "Finding Bigfoot" program with. A lot of people pay a lot of money for crap because they "believe". I coined the term sciencey because its like Colbert's truthy, and will tweak the linguistic geeks that have hijacked the thread. (threadjacked)

I got a little bit confused by this thread, have they actually found evidence of Bigfoot or not?

clank75 wrote:

One of the most misunderstood 'rules' in English that I notice is that people think you use "an" before a vowel, when the reality is you use "an" before a vowel sound. Hence I say (and more importantly, write) "an hotel" or "an historic" because I'm British and the H is silent in those words, but uncontroversially on t'other side of the pond you also say "an hour", possibly without even realising it.

That's a bit odd, I notice (from a later post) you're an import to Yorkshire like myself, but I was taught to pronounce the 'h' in hotel, so to me it would be "a hotel", "a historic..." and so on. How come you do it the other way around?

You're technically correct that common usage of data is quickly changing, but it is still completely required (without exception) to use it as a plural word in "real" scientific journals. In other words, this is one more piece of evidence that this journal isn't really a scientific, peer-reviewed outlet.

I'm sorry, I can't let this claim stand. I'm currently at a research institution, and I study and publish in the academic literature. This isn't true at all. A quick look over at scholar.google.com is easy enough to refute this. Try searching for the phrase 'machine learning "little data"' - there are thousands of results in published academic literature treating "data" as a singular mass noun. If you remove "machine learning" and just search for "little data", you hundreds of thousands of results, and you even frequently get such semantic anomalies as "little data were", from people trying to follow silly rules about "data" being plural, but messing up and using "little" to modify a plural noun.

To make the problem clear, think of the meaning of the phrase "little apples were falling to the ground." That does not mean that the number of apples that was falling was small, but that the apples themselves were small. So when people say "little data were" because of some silly rule, they end up saying something about small data points, not about a small quantity of data. If you really want to understand the language, go look at the language log posts I linked to earlier (and it turns out the people who post there are university professors, who also publish in peer-reviewed outlets, once again refuting your claim).

I was pleased when I became aware of the ongoing DNA research that was underway and the new groundbreaking efforts that were being made by Dr. Melba Ketchum in Texas. I followed the numerous websites and radio interviews that were commenting about this research, and was very gladdened by the December and February Coast to Coast AM Interview by George Knapp.

I congratulate Dr. Melba Ketchum for her unyielding dedication to see this process to the end, and the publication by Denovo Scientific Journal of the Article, “Novel North America Hominins”, and edited by Dr. Rayford Wallace.

I had taken note of the fact that numerous highly opinionated individuals, who are Skeptics, had almost always made deleterious comments to the effect that the DNA findings must be flawed by some form of contamination for the resrearch to have shown the presence of Human Mitochondrial DNA.Dr. Ketchum spoke in reply to the matter of sample contamination many times, and detailed the efforts that were being made to forestall that problem. the Skeptics were obviously not listening clearly, because they continued to rail that there absolutely must have been contamination of the DNA Samples that were used in this Study, all 109 of them.

The true facts seem to be that an enormous amount of care had been taken by Dr. Melba Ketchum and her highly skilled associates, who used State of the Art Forensic Techniques to prevent even the remotest possibility of that happening, and my reading of the Study confirmed the rather obvious conclusion that most of the skeptics had unquestionably jumped to their conclusions without any real factual evidence, as usual.

The work done by the University of Texas Southwestern at Dallas has revealed that the three samples that Dr. Kertchum had submitted for Nuclear DNA sequencing were of very high quality, and highly purified, and capable of providing valid results using the Illumina Next Generation Sequencing Platform, with a statistical probability greater than 1:1000 of being correctly sequenced.Obviously these were not “Contaminated Samples”

TAKE NOTICE OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION, As reported in the Prweb press release, at The Seattle WA Newpaper website, www.seattlepi.com

“The team, led by Dr. Melba S. Ketchum, DVM, of DNA Diagnostics in Nacogdoches, TX, submitted a tissue sample, a saliva sample, and a blood sample to the DNA Laboratory at the University of Texas, Southwestern, who then sequenced the Three whole Nuclear Genomes using the Next-Generation Illumina HiSeq 2000 Platform. The University lab reported that the three genomes all attained Q30 quality scores above 88 on the Illumina platform, which is significantly higher than the platform average of 85, indicating highly-purified, single-source DNA with no contamination for each sample. The three Sasquatch genomes were reported to align well with one-another and show substantial homology to primate sequences.”

NOTE: The important fact to observe regarding this information is that the Q30 Scores of these three Genomes, with over 90 Gb of Raw seqence for each sample, (This amount of data comprises greater than 30x coverage), were 88.6, 88.4 and 88.7 respectively. The Q30 score is the percent of reads that have the statistical probability greater than 1:1000 of being correctly sequenced by the Illumina Next Generation Platform. According to Illumina, a pure single source sample would have a Q30 score of 80 or greater, with an average Q30 score of 85. Contaminated or multiple source samples would have much poorer Q30 scores in the range of 40 to 50. That is clearly not the case with this project.

Therefore, according to the University of Texas DNA Laboratory, not only were the three samples that were submitted for sequencing by Dr. Ketchum each determined to be totally UNCONTMINATED, and were each determined to be from a single source, and also that the resultant Q30 quality scores of the sequences that were then obtained from these samples were FAR ABOVE the average score of 85 for Genomes that are sequenced using the Illumina Next Generation Sequencing Platform.

A Further comment made about the samples was: “The high quality of the Genomes can be attributed to the STRINGENT EXTRACTION PROCEDURES UTILIZED WHEREBY THE DNA WAS REPEATEDLY PURIFIED”.

Dr. Ketchum obviously did a good job of providing very high quality, carfully screened samples that were capable of providing valid results. These results are very repeatable and consistent.

NOTE: It would appear that the University of Texas Southwestern's DNA Laboratory is rather sure that theie efforts resulted in the achieving very good Genomes, that were tested and determined to be of very high quality. How could you ask for much more than that?

You will not be able to find any qualified Geneticist who can argue with the spectacular results produced by the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS DNA Labaoratory. Those were very good Q30 scores.

One Nuclear Genome would normally be considered to be more than adequate to prove the existence of a new species. To correctly identify an animal species, more than 100 bp are usually required, regardless of whether COI or cytb is used. New species have been recognized to exist by Science, with as little as a few thousand base pairs, which is a relatively rather small number of base pairs.

(The sample size here was 90 Gb for each of three samples. See the Articles Supplementary Data 7-10)

There were at least 2.7 Million Base Pairs that were analyzed and studied, much more than what is needed to prove the existence of a new species. 2.7 Million bp, as were examined in this study, as were part of the Three Genomes produced, is definitly Gross OVERKILL.

“My opinion of the creature is that it is a hybrid of a human mother and an unknown hominid male, Just as reported. For all practical purposes, it should be treated as human and protected under law”.

He also made this very succinct comment, that puts the matter to rest with finality,“Sasquatch is real, as proven by genetic analysis”.

I believe that this groundbreaking DNA Study was done with very great care and that the resultant findings are now thoroughly capable of proving to even the most diehard, outspoken Skeptics, that there is incontrovertible PROOF that there is an unclassified Hominin roaming North America.

This legion of very high quality Scientific evidence is backed up by the substantial work that has been done at many highly respected instituions like The University of Texas at Dallas, Texas A & M University, and several other academic institutions and by several Professional and Government Laboratories.

I urge everyone, and especially all hardcore Skeptics to take the time to read this amazing DNA Study Article and to become aware of the incredible quality of the Science that is behind it, which is simply amazing in itself. You will find answers to questions you could not have imagined ever asking.

The website of the Sasquatch Genome Project, at http://sasquatchgenomeproject.org/ is full of some of the most interesting information that you have ever read. I very highly recommned its perusal.

Being a skeptic does not require that you cannot accept the results that are obtained by valid Scientific studies, that are done with a great deal of care and appropriate attention to detail by highly skilled professionals, at highly accredited institutions of Higher Learning!

Dr. Ketchum and her esteemed colleagues are to be heartily commended for the dedication that they have shown during the five long years that it has taken to conclude the first round of this research.

My kudos to these BRAVE DNA Researchers who absolutely refused to give up and quit.They will go down in History! And all of those ridiculed Bigfoot Eyewitnesses are vindicated!

I was pleased when I became aware of the ongoing DNA research that was underway and the new groundbreaking efforts that were being made by Dr. Melba Ketchum in Texas. <snip>

Being a skeptic does not require that you cannot accept the results that are obtained by valid Scientific studies, that are done with a great deal of care and appropriate attention to detail by highly skilled professionals at highly accredited institutions of Higher Learning!

Of course not. That would be Denialism.

Quote:

Dr. Ketchum and her esteemed colleagues are to be heartily commended for the dedication that they have shown during the five long years that it has taken to conclude the first round of this research.

My kudos to these BRAVE DNA Researchers who absolutely refused to give up and quit.They will go down in History! And all of those ridiculed Bigfoot Eyewitnesses are vindicated!

Not so fast. You may believe they are vindicated. And perhaps they are. Or will be. Others of us will wait for independent confirmation by other laboratories. There is no rush here. That too is consistent with Skepticism.

Sasquatch isn't going anywhere. If it exists it isn't immediately threatened: no one has yet to produce a single corpse. And therein lies the rub. The claim is "conclusive DNA proof" that the species exists. Perhaps it does. But where is it?

Sasquatch has been my nickname at the pool for years. Around the middle of summer I usually have a contest to see who wins my back hair I shave off.

Massive body hair is a real babe magnet.

Oh my, I had a teacher in high school whose facial hair basically continued down to his torso and legs, even fingers without any clear boundary. His chest hair would stick through shirt openings. When he shaved, it looked like someone else's head was attached to an ape body. He was the most hairy person I have ever seen in my life.